DARIO BRUNA - Sunset

After three albums in 2015, the Italian label Solitunes Records - specialized in strictly solo works - returns. Following the excellent work by Federico Marchesano – “The Inner Bass” – it's now the turn of Dario Bruna, a drummer, percussionist and composer who has been active since the 1980s in a variety of projects spanning prog-rock, new wave and jazz, right through to research music and sonic improvisation. In 2016 he takes on the arduous task of writing and recording a solo album, an experiment that on one hand conceals great risks, but on the other can also reveal great opportunities.

The twelve tracks on “Sunset” – all roughly three minutes long – form a series of sound sketches that are often quite different from one another, employing – alongside percussion – synth, piano and vocal overdubs. The diversity of the tracks makes “Sunset” decidedly varied, yet at the same time simple and immediately engaging.

There's nothing particularly innovative or over-complicated here; Bruna crafts a series of small collages ranging from the modern classical piano (with percussion) of “Rapido e scuro” to the rapid, minimalist repetitions of the excellent “Mosso e continuo”, which break off into an unexpected Eastern mood, to the 80s synth-pop-like rhythms of “Elegia”, right through to decidedly more electronic episodes such as “Mobile e immerso”.

But the moments where Bruna strikes a balance between the various elements (the album's influences and his own biography) are the best; this is achieved, for instance, in “Un poco cantabile”, which in its simplicity is a perfect and moving sound collage; but also in “Denso e epico”, which finds a well-calibrated junction between piano and percussion; or in “Ruvido”, with Eastern-sounding vocals and a bare-bones bass-and-drums rhythm, right up to “Palindromo”, which, as its title suggests, begins and ends with the sound of bells but contains an energetic, restless synth in between.

There's a certain duality running through the tracks – also present in most of the titles – which is the album's strongest asset; but this duality never feels fully spelled out, perhaps due to the brevity of the tracks, perhaps due to an uncertainty about the intended goal. “Sunset” could well be a first step toward a greater awareness on Bruna's part of his abilities as a solo musician (this being his first such experience), and a clearer sense of his real ambitions, which still seem somewhat undefined.

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06/09/2016